{"id":1025,"date":"2020-07-21T15:28:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T21:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2021-10-23T14:17:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-23T20:17:10","slug":"back-on-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/back-on-track\/","title":{"rendered":"Back on Track"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m very long overdue for an update about my goings on and\ndoings. Last year was something of a whirlwind of stuff. And this year has been\nan even greater swirl of social change, upheaval, sickness and awakenings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve been watching the ongoing reports of covid in America and my local circles of communities and how they\u2019ve responded in this time where we need to pull together and support each other I\u2019ve been alternately elated and severely disappointed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, with the Black Lives Matter movement and the huge social and political change that is happening as a result, as I have supported my local protests and had big conversations with a lot of my communities I am still astounded in the huge variance of responses hope that people will eventually pull together and move us all to a new stage of enlightenment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond engaging on the streets, I do some of my share of support and making spaces for marginalized peoples also in the games I make. I want to make experiences that lead people to act from compassionate spaces instead of fearful ones. I often forget to post about it because I\u2019m so deep in the doing and sorting the results. Many of my academic friends have bugged me about documenting things so here I am, beginning that process . Again. LOL!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, let\u2019s dive into it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DePaul Originals Game Studio.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m still teaching at DePaul but have taken up a new endeavor\nwithing the school. I started a game studio inside DePaul University alongside\na colleague of mine, Will Meyers. It\u2019s called DePaul Originals Game Studio and\nit has been a slow growing thing now for about a year and a half and has taken\nup the lion\u2019s share of my time which meant I had to say no to a bunch of other\ncool projects that came my way. Trying to create and build games within an\nacademic space and with students is a very different beast from doing it on my\nown or with a professional studio. Most notably the process is slower by an\norder of magnitude. Students have a million bad habits and aren\u2019t even remotely\nconfident in their skillsets so it takes a while to help them build confidence\nand get to a point where they can create at a steady pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all that said I\u2019m very proud of the work the students\nhave been doing. I find it nourishing to watch people grow and go from \u201cI can\u2019t\ndo that\u201d to becoming  skilled enough to\nrun workshops where they teach other students and folks from the local game\ncommunity how to do what they previously didn\u2019t know how to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m hoping that, as time goes by, we\u2019ll refine our processes\nenough to publish a beautiful, professional feeling game that also has some\ndepth and opens conversations. The themes I normally try to address (belonging,\nkinship, erasure, depression, witnessing, community ecologies) are present in\nour first game which centers around a dog trying to find her way, after losing\nher people, in a world that has lost its sense of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can check out https:\/\/ogs.cdm.depaul.edu\/<\/a>\nif you\u2019re interested in our progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been very busy doing a lot of game writing for a lot of\ndifferent spaces. I think the thing I\u2019m proudest about here is my work on \u201cWhen\nRivers Were Trails\u201d which is a beautiful educational game, designed by the always\nawesome Elizabeth LaPens\u00e9e.  The\ndescription of the game, as posted on the website is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Rivers Were Trails<\/em> is a 2D point-and-click\nadventure game in which Oregon Trail<\/em> meets Where the\nWater Tastes Like Wine<\/em>. An Anishinaabeg in the 1890\u2019s is displaced from\ntheir traditional territory in Minnesota and heads west to California due to\nthe impact of allotment acts on Indigenous communities, facing Indian Agents,\nmeeting people from different nations, and hunting, fishing, and canoeing along\nthe way as they balance their wellbeing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s free and can be found at https:\/\/indianlandtenure.itch.io\/when-rivers-were-trails<\/a> and is a great thing for those of you engaging homeschooling in the COVID world and for any teachers who need some interesting teacher activities to give to students that will lead to some great learning and big conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a great breakdown of the game to be found at https:\/\/whenriversweretrails.gamepedia.com\/When_Rivers_Were_Trails_Wiki<\/a>, which can be used to enhanced the learning from the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to \u201cWhen Rivers Were Trails\u201d I\u2019ve also been relatively active on the TTRPG front helping to diversify and deepen some older properties. Notably the new Chicago by Night for\u00a0 Vampire 5E is out, as is Scion Second Edition, both of which I had a part in writing. Forthcoming is the Hunter the Vigil: Second Edition which includes an indigenous themed compact devoting to ecologically responsible monster hunting as well as an updating of all of the old compacts and conspiracies therein. I think the setting, as a whole, has become much more intriguing and engaging and makes room for a lot more perspectives and types of people to participate in protecting the world form the forces of darkness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Games<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I ran a game for the setting on Twitch which can be found by searching Uptown Shadows at https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/theonyxpath<\/a> the OnyxPathPublishing Twitch Channel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as new games go, I also am a writer on Bastion, an afro-futurist fantasy setting using the Mythic D6 system from Khepera Publishing. The owner, Jerry D. Grayson is an awesome designer, and I was ecstatic to be invited by him to contribute to Bastion. You can check that out more about it at https:\/\/kheperapublishing.com\/khepera-publishing-home\/mythic-d6\/bastion-afro-centric-sword-and-sorcery-fantasy\/<\/a> . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Own Stuff<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As far as my own stuff goes, I haven\u2019t forgotten Ehdrigohr. It has carried my far and we are still on interesting journeys. I was able to run it at a couple local cons when my time allowed and I\u2019m gearing up (again) to start a live-play of it. There are tons of half written notes about the setting and I need to figure out how to tie up so loose ends and rev up for a new edition. The major focus there is that I\u2019ve learned a ton over the years since I got Ehdrigohr out into the world. I\u2019ve got a better grasp of language, culture, and where people struggle to connect with the game. I\u2019ve been doing a lot of creating with cards in my summer youth programs which is leading me to see a version of the game where we use cards as a big part of the story telling process. These thoughts are coming from two other projects I\u2019ve been working on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dreamwalk\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first is a boardgame called Dreamwalk. This was\/is a\nproject begun not long after Ehdrigohr was published with my colleague Dr.\nDoris Rusch who is a fantastic designer who focuses on \u201cdeep games\u201d and has\ntaught me a lot about way to frame things I was doing subconsciously. Dreamwalk\nis a something of a group therapy game\/group storytelling game. It\u2019s about\nexamining the cycle of struggles that comes out of the constant interactions\nbetween people as they work to manage their virtues and flaws. I think we got\npretty close to a finished game with Dreamwalk but have to rework numerous\npieces that were getting in the way of the storytelling. If you\u2019re at all\ninterested in playtesting the game, please reach out and we\u2019ll talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second is a project that began life as the Arboretum\nImaginarium, in collaboration with artist Stacey Taheny, which is a set of cards\nmeant to be used for introspective explorations. I learned a lot form creating\nthose cards and how people relate and respond to the images and the kind of\nsharing that happens in the spaces created in the rituals of play. I\u2019m taking\nthose ideas and expanding on them in a solo project with new deck called the Rebus\nMysteria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This deck is meant to serve a similar purpose but I chose to\nground this one in ideas of indigenous kinship with the land. It is composed of\nimages from mostly my own photography and revolves around getting people to\nconnect with these nature spaces and finding what narratives they carry in association\nwith those spaces and using those for creative writing and introspective\njournaling. I intend to do something similar with Ehdrigohr either as part of a\nnew edition or as a supplementary tool for what is currently there. I find that\nthe tactile nature of cards and the physical mechanisms inherent interacting\nwith them  go a long way towards helping\npeople build a connection to the bigger narratives and keep track of their\nplaces within those narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally there are more games forthcoming. I have a new TTRPG in the works which is a bit of modern action horror in a world where the gods are real and it turns out that they\u2019re not good for humanity. It\u2019s a divine conspiracy where players awakening to the truth must use the stuff of dream to battle a divine conspiracy that is threatening to come crumbling down and take all of humanity with it. More on this in a later post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as systems go for this game I\u2019m considering both Powered by The Apocalypse and the old D6 system that powered the old Star Wars game and currently manifests in the Mythic D6 stuff. I may end up with something that is an amalgam of the two. We shall see. Right now it\u2019s all big broad strokes and I\u2019ll be pulling together some folks to try playing some of the bits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s it for now. I\u2019ll be expanding on some of the topics I touched on in this post in later posts along with some things i can’t talk about just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-AllenT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all! I\u2019m very long overdue for an update about my goings on and doings. Last year was something of a whirlwind of stuff. And this year has been an even greater swirl of social change, upheaval, sickness and awakenings. As I\u2019ve been watching the ongoing reports of covid in \u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,4,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ehdrigohr","category-game-design","category-musings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/TurtleShellMusic-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2cHuQ-gx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/council-of-fools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}